Aliens in Windsor Read online

  Sally Ann Melia

  Aliens in Windsor

  Copyright © 2021 by Sally Ann Melia

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Sally Ann Melia asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Sally Ann Melia has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Letter to the Reader

  Illustration: Windsor

  Illustration: Coffee and Biscuits

  The Staff Room

  Illustration: Oaks by the River Thames

  The Playing Field

  Illustration: Norman Gate

  The Quad

  Illustration: Arthur Road

  Home

  Illustration: The Queen Charlotte

  The Queen Charlotte

  Illustration: Orion’s Belt

  Royal College Chapel

  Illustration: Chapel Angel

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  Dedication

  This tale harks back to the Golden Science Fiction age of the 60s.

  Escape with me as we explore the one-time medieval monastery,

  current-day school of Windsor in the company of aliens.

  Dedicated to Rose

  Letter to the Reader

  John Henning, UnSplash

  Dear Reader,

  If you dream of wandering the Champs Elysées in Paris in spring, if you can imagine sipping champagne in Raffles in Singapore or the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo or even Tiffany’s in New York, then welcome.

  If you can imagine sharing rice-bowls with Sherpas at the base camp of Everest or watching kangaroo herds race across the outback, then you have come upon kindred spirits.

  If you’d enjoy taking a medieval chorister’s pew to listen to Christmas evensong sung by Oxford’s senior choir, or sitting on a velvet banquette in Vienna’s Opera House to watch Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, please sit back, relax and enjoy.

  Join me as we travel from one glittering location to another, we will be aliens, and also meet aliens, as we explore the most exotic streets and savour the greatest wonders of our planet together…

  Enjoys Aliens,

  Sally Ann Melia

  Illustration: Windsor

  As a result of the castle, Windsor is a popular tourist destination and has facilities usually found in larger towns: two railway stations, a theatre and several substantial hotels.

  As for schools, pupils aged 13–18 are provided for at the town’s two single-sex state secondary schools:

  The Windsor Boys’ School

  Windsor Girls’ School

  Together with the independent schools:

  St George’s School, Windsor Castle

  Eton College

  (Wiki, Windsor.)

  Lorena Kelly, Unsplash

  Illustration: Coffee and Biscuits

  Nescafé Coffee and HobNobs Gift Box is a decadent selection of coffee and delicious chocolate-coated, nutty-oat biscuits, the perfect gift for any Nescafé fan.

  (Anonymous.)

  Calum Lewis, Unsplash

  The Staff Room

  Alison’s phone called to her with a robotic ringtone her that told it was a message from her SETI What’s App group.

  Ignore it, she told herself. Her phone was at the bottom of her bag and she was in a hurry.

  “Be-be, Be-be…” He was greasy-haired, acne-spotted and lank of frame. He was also sufficiently higher up the stairwell, that she might ignore him, except her phone called out to her again. A distinctive robotic whistle echoed through the stairwell. What was up with SETI today? And why now, when this particular student was in earshot?

  “Be-Be Beep Beep,” the youth echoed. He was grinning at her as he lounged against the noticeboard at the top of the stairs, exactly halfway between the chemistry corridor and the staff room.

  Ignore Him. Alison told herself, but after so many steps she was also slightly out of breath, so was forced to pause. I’m out of breath because I’m short, and I’ve just climbed fours flights of stairs. It’s got nothing to do with me being fat.

  And I’m not that fat, she told herself. Still, she wanted to saunter carefree into the sanctuary of the staff room with its chocolate HobNobs and Nescafé coffee, but instead her body forced her to breathe and in doing so her eyes betrayed her.

  She glanced at the boy. Leonard Jenkins. Lenny to his friends. ‘Jesus Jenkins!’ to the staff. Always at the back of 11A, feet up on a chair, destined to fail his GCSEs. His failure was not even one of the borderline cases that kept Mr Foster the deputy-head fretting about school rankings and Ofsted ratings. No, this boy would probably spend the next two years smoking on a bus stop calling insults at tidy old ladies, then maybe if he did not get into trouble the army might be persuaded to take him, except his daddy would probably find him a cushy apprenticeship on a trading floor somewhere. No doubt his arrogant ignorance would work wonders in the world of high finance. So good luck to him and in the meantime she was still his teacher, so with a sinking heart she said:

  “Jenkins, what are you doing here?”

  “Wot?” he replied, all attitude and insolence.

  “Leonard Jenkins?”

  “Lenny,” he replied with mock emphasis. “Lenny Jenkins, Prof Be-Beep…” he said and then with a fake apology and a point. “Soz. Double Chem. You know what I mean. Prof?”

  How dare he? Only the very stupid ones used her nickname to her face: Professor Be-Beep. Alison counted her life in decades, ten years as a kid, ten years at school, ten years studying for a PhD is Astrophysics and Digital Astronomy, ten years travelling the globe between Dark Skies sites, and the world’s largest telescopes. Then when her mum got sick - two years teaching at a private boy’s boarding school, two years that felt like ten. And a nick-name derived from the numerous papers and articles she had authored for SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life Institute.

  Prof Be-Beep indeed! What was wrong in believing life beyond this planet was a statistical certainty? It was just a case of finding it in such a vast cosmos which was the tricky bit.

  “Why aren’t you waiting for your teacher in class?”

  “Can’t go in Prof, someone left the gas taps open. Prof opened the windows, but we’re waiting for the room to clear.”

  With the briefest of glares, and a stamp which said you are a bug who I crush underfoot, s
he strode across the landing her nose in the air. At that moment her phone rang once again with its loud and distinctive ringtone. Behind her Johnson or Jenkins guffawed loudly, and Alison desperately grabbed the staff room door handle and swung into what she expected was the safety beyond, only to find the staffroom quiet and tense, all the teachers were clustered around Mr McCreedy, the head groundsman. As she watched somebody handing him a coffee, her phone rang again.

  “Two sugars,” he said automatically. She had set a robot-call alarm for her SETI WhatsApp group, all of whom were based in Arizona. One or two of the staff glanced at her in surprise, most still focused on McCreedy.

  Someone else offered him a chocolate Hobnob - he refused. Alison reached in to grab the packet as someone passed it back. She felt guilty to have been so possessively greedy, but the packet looked almost empty. She glanced and saw there was another pack on the shelf next to the sugar. Only that was an orange packet, the plain Hobnobs, Alison was holding what was possibly the last chocolate hobnob in the staffroom. She glanced down at her lack of waistline. Maybe she should not be eating chocolate.

  The robot whistled again, louder, more insistently. Now all the others were glaring at her.

  “Okay, I’ll switch it off,” she apologised, putting the last chocolate hobnob carefully on the side. Now she realised they had all seen her take the last biscuit. Maybe she should give it to Mr McCreedy. He was as pale as a sheet which very unusual for a man who never normally ventured in doors…

  Her phone called again - Really what was up with SETI? Was it not four in the morning in California?

  As she dug in her bag to find her phone, Mr Foster burst into the room. He too looked flustered and bewildered. “He’s right, they’re gone. Four of the five mature oaks on the riverside have disappeared.”

  Trees, thought Alison, blown down? She skirted around the group to the kettle. Others were asking questions.

  When had it happened? Last night.

  Was the river blocked? No.

  Can we get some logs for the great hall?

  Was it the council’s job to clear the mess?

  No, no, because there were no logs, there was no mess.

  By this time Alison had silenced her phone and poured herself a Nescafé and was considering dunking the last chocolate HobNob. What if it melted?

  “The river’s clear, there’re no logs, there’s nothing to be cleared - the trees are gone.” The bell rang even as Mr Foster elaborated: “Nothing at all, just as Mr McCreedy said, the trees have simply disappeared and left nasty great holes at the side of the pitch. Mr McCreedy, did you see anything?”

  “No, Mr Foster, nothing - they’re just gone.” He looked like he should still be sitting down but he had jumped to attention when Foster spoke his name.

  The bell sounded a second time.

  “That’s the bell everyone, get to class - just tell the students the trees were diseased… Tell them the Council…” Mr Foster paused, no doubt he was already drafting a letter to parents.

  “Tell ‘em the ‘wee folk took ‘em,” that was Mrs Peters, A-level Psychology, Irish, liked to think she was a wit, now she glanced pityingly at Alison, “or maybe it was ‘em lil’ green men?”

  Alison turned back to the kettle, pretending she had not heard as she gulped another mouthful of coffee, then threw the remainder of the drink down the sink. The cold water on her hands as she rinsed the cup was soothing.

  So what if she had a city lawyer for a husband and three sons, Eileen Peters had only graduated 2.1 from Swansea University - wherever that was - who was she to sneer?

  “We’ll need to rope the holes off McCreedy - can’t have any of the students falling in…” Mr Foster was saying.

  Poor man, thought Alison. The groundsman had looked pale before; now he looked like someone had asked him to dig his own grave.

  “I’ll come give you a hand,” She heard herself say.

  “I don’t have my A-level crew until 11.15,” She said for Foster’s benefit.

  “I could do with the exercise.” She added to forestall the doubt in McCreedy’s eye.

  “Okay I’ll get the tape and some sticks. I’ll meet you by the river, Professor.”

  Illustration: Oaks by the River Thames

  Windsor Great Park has the largest collection of old oaks remaining in Western Europe. These trees are not only of historic interest, but are also a valuable part of our cultural heritage. They would have been used by William the Conqueror to build Windsor Castle.

  (Wiki, Windsor Greak Park.)

  Egor on Unsplash

  The Playing Field

  Alison had power-walked to the river. Okay, she was short. And yes she was fat, well a bit fat, but she knew she was a good walker and she could make good time with her clipped fast steps. She was pleased when she arrived at the riverside before Mr McCreedy got back from which ever of his sheds or stores he stowed important stuff such as stakes and ‘keep clear’ ribbons.

  Good, she thought, it would not do to keep him waiting.

  Also she had time to stride the circumference of one of the holes. It was at least seven metres across, and deep… Water was pooling at the bottom, seeping through from the river no doubt. The trees had not been felled and hauled away. No, it was if they had been lifted with care. Their roots kept in tact. But how?

  “They were three-hundred-year-old oaks,” McCreedy stabbed the first stake into the ground. “Close on twenty metres high, and in prime condition.”

  “There’s no damage to the grass…” Alison said. The lawn around the trees was pristine, admittedly now she looked it was scattered with twiglets and stray leaves, but there was no sign of any trucks or tractors.

  “And it rained last night,” McCreedy said, waving to where a puddle stretched across the tarmac road. “Anything big enough to transport them would have torn up the turf and left tire marks.” The tarmac road was pristine as well.

  “There’s nothing,” Alison agreed. “Could the rain have washed the tracks away?”

  McCreedy did not reply just snorted.

  “Hold this,” he said handing her the end of the red plastic tape, “while I put this in.” He waved another stake at her and strode away.

  Hold the end of the tape.

  Alison nodded. It was not rocket science, she thought, looking at the red and white striped plastic printed with the word Danger. Twisted, she thought, and she tried to untangle the tape with her fingers. Her handbag slipped from her shoulder to her elbow, and opened like a yawning mouth. Inside she saw her phone light up and jiggle…

  She reached across her body to grab her phone, and peered at the screen she saw she had eight messages from What’s App SETI. The first line of each message was displayed in her notifications.

  “First Contact Alert incoming…” read one.

  “Landfall 51.4957° N, -0.6044° W, 21:46:21 PDT,” read another.

  “Ali, it’s your home town…” read the last.

  “I’ll pick that up then, shall I?” Alison looked up to see McCreedy striding towards her. The plastic tape had slipped through her fingers and was now sliding like a grass snake along the ground.

  “Oh,” Alison went to apologise.

  “You better take that,” McCreedy said bluntly.

  Alison nodded, quickly dropping her handbag to the floor, so better to control the phone. Six of the What’s App messages had links. She clicked one. The browser opened to a blank screen and an error message. Of course, the Wi-Fi was not brilliant this far from the main buildings. She read again the last message from Jasmin Chung, senior researcher at ATA, the Allen Telescope Array, not as the wags called it the Alien Telescope Array, no the world’s largest installation dedicated to astronomical observations and a simultaneous Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI):

  “Wake-up Ali, we think they landed in Windsor, England.” Jasmin had written.

  Alison sighed, another of the messages had a link to a map reference, she looked guiltily to whe
re McCreedy strode on and punched another stake in the ground then longingly back to the school building. That is when she saw him.

  Thomas, Stewart? Year 7. One of the blond choir boys. Sprinting towards them. Blond no longer, his hair was stained dark red with paint? No blood. He was closer now and she saw there was a nasty cut across his forehead.

  “They’re eating us alive, Professor.” He yelled.

  McCreedy had turned to look now. Alison was already reaching into her handbag for a wipe, a clean handkerchief. There was a first aid box in the staff room, she thought.

  “They’re monsters…” The boy hissed. “They got George, George Hesse, Arnold too and another boy…”

  Alison glanced again at McCreedy, was he hearing this? But McCreedy was looking beyond Alison and the boy. Across the manicured lawns of the school, boys were running, some sprinting in close formations, some valiantly supporting injured co-students in pairs and triples, and at the back a group of six carrying a prone figure, seemingly using their blazers as a makeshift stretcher.

  McCreedy had already dropped both the tape and holding one stake as if it was a spear, he was racing towards the boys.

  “Run Thomas!” Alison told the blood stained angel. “Run as fast as you can.”

  “Stuart Professor, it’s Stuart,” the boy replied, then. “I think it’s aliens, Miss”

  Alison was already moving, following McCreedy.

  “Run!” she shouted once more over her shoulder, and pointed to the gate.